SECTION I.

MY life, it has been seen, began with winter. Then followed a season
of storm and sunshine, merging in a long gloom. If I had died of that six
years’ illness, I should have considered my life a fair average one, as to
happiness,—even while thinking more about happiness, and caring more for it,
than I do now. I did not know, ten years ago, what life might be, in regard
to freedom, vigour, and peace of mind; and, not knowing this, I should have
died in the persuasion that I had been, on the whole, as happy as the
conditions of human existence allow. But the spring, summer and autumn of
life were yet to come. I have had them now,—all rapidly succeeding each
other, and crowded into a small space, like the Swedish summer, which bursts
out of a long winter with the briefest interval of spring. At past forty
years of age, I began to relish life, without drawback; and for ten years I
have been vividly conscious of its delights, as undisturbed by cares as my
anxious nature, and my long training to trouble could permit me ever to be.
I believe there never was before any time in my life when I should not have
been rather glad than sorry to lay it down. During this last sunny period, I
have not acquired any dread or dislike of death; but I have felt, for the
first, time a keen and unvarying relish of life. It seems to be generally
supposed that a relish of life implies a fear or dislike of death, except in
the minds of those shallow and self‐willed persons who expect to step over
the threshold of death into just the same life that they have
page: 484 quitted,—with the same associates, employments,
recreations,—the same every thing, except natural scenery. But this does not
at all agree with my experience. I have no expectation of that kind,—nor
personal expectation of any kind after death; and I have a particularly keen
relish of life,—all the keener for being late: yet now, while in daily
expectation of death, I certainly feel no dislike or dread of it; nor do I
find my pleasant daily life at all overshadowed by the certainty that it is
near its end. If this seems strange to people who hold other views than
mine, their baseless conclusions,—that I must dread death because I enjoy
life,—appear no less strange to me. They surely do not refuse to enjoy any
other pleasure because it must come to an end; and why this? And if they
feel sad as the end of other pleasures draws near, it is because they
anticipate feeling the absence and the blank. Thus, we grieve, and cannot
but grieve, at the death of a friend, whose absence will leave a blank in
our life: but the laying down our own life, to yield our place to our
successors, and simply ceasing to be, seems to me to admit of no fear or
regret; except through the corruption introduced by false and superstitious
associations. I suppose we must judge, each for ourselves, in such matters:
but I cannot but remember that I have gone through the Christian experience
in regard to the expectation of death, and feel that I understand it, while
Christians have not experienced, and I perceive do not understand, my
present view and feeling in the expectation of death. But if they care to
have my own statement, they are welcome to it. It is what I have said:—that
for ten years I have had as keen a relish of life as I believe my nature to
be capable of; and that I feel no reluctance whatever to pass into
nothingness, leaving my place in the universe to be filled by another. The
very conception of self and other is, in truth,
merely human, and when the self ceases to be, the distinction expires.

I remember that when the prospect of health and prolonged life opened before
me, there was a positive drawback, and a serious one, in the dread of having
the whole thing to go over again, some time or other. I had recourse to
desperate comforts under
page: 485 this
apprehension. I hoped I might die by a railway crash, or some other sudden
accident; or that I might sink away in mere old age; or I trusted that time
might somehow make some change. I little thought how short a time would make
so vast a change! I little thought that in ten years I should find myself
far more fatally ill, without the slightest reluctance, and with the gayest
feeling that really it does not matter whether I feel ill or well,—(short of
acute and protracted pain, of which I have still a great dread) if only
other people are not made unhappy. All the solemn, doleful feeling about my
sufferings, which seemed right and appropriate, if not religious, a dozen
years ago, now appears selfish, and low, and a most needless infliction on
myself and others. Once become aware of how little consequence it is, and
how the universe will go on just the same, whether one dies at fifty or
seventy, one looks gaily on the last stage of one’s subjection to the great
laws of nature,—notes what one can of one’s state for the benefit of others,
and enjoys the amusement of watching the course of human affairs from one’s
fresh and airy point of view, above the changes of the elements with which
one has no further personal concern. The objective and disinterested
contemplation of eternity is, in my apprehension, the sublimest pleasure
that human faculties are capable of; and the pleasure is most vivid and real
when one’s disinterestedness is most necessary and complete,—that is, when
our form of its life is about to dissolve, to make way for another.

After spending a month on the shores of Windermere, I went for a long visit
to my dear elder brother’s, some of whose children had grown up from infancy
to youth during my illness. He and his wife had attached me to them more
than ever by their recent conduct. Thinking me right in my effort to recover
health, and wronged in much of the treatment I had received, they upheld me
steadily and effectually, while, at the same time, they saw how the wrong
was mainly owing to prejudice and want of the knowledge pertinent to the
case; and they therefore did not find it necessary to quarrel with any body.
I thought then, and I think now, that they were just and kind all round; and
I am sure they were no small assistance to me in keeping my
tem‐
page: 486 per
temper
. They took a great interest in the subject of mesmerism, and
enjoyed seeing its operation in cases similar to my own, and in many others,
in which sufferers, pronounced incurable by the doctors, were restored as I
had been. One amusement to us all at that time was the pity with which the
doctors regarded me. I could quote several medical men who reasoned that, as
my disease was an incurable one, I could not possibly be radically better;
that I was then in a state of exhilaration, infatuation, and so forth; and
that in six months (or three months or a year, as might be) I should be as
ill as ever, and mourning over my having been duped by the mesmerists. Now
and then we heard, or saw in the newspapers, that I was as ill
as ever, and mourning my infatuation,—though I was walking five or seven
miles at a time, and giving every evidence of perfect health. The end of it
was that I went off to the East,—into the depths of Nubia, and traversing
Arabia on a camel; and then the doctors said I had never been ill! It is
very curious,—this difficulty of admitting evidence about any new, or newly
revived, fact in nature. I remember Mr. Hallam (the last man open to the
charge of credulity) telling me at Tynemouth a story which struck me very
much. He told me how he and his friend Mr. Rogers had had the privilege of
witnessing that very rare spectacle, “the reception by a great metropolis,
of the discovery of a pregnant natural fact.” He told me,—and he has so
manfully told plenty of other people, that I am betraying no confidence in
repeating the story once more,—that Mr. Rogers and he had, many years
before, seen some mesmeric facts in Paris which convinced and impressed them
for life. When they returned, they told what they had seen, and were met by
such insulting ridicule that they were compelled to be silent, or to quarrel
with some of their pleasurest friends. One physician in particular he named,
who treated them at his own table in a way which prevented their ever again
communicating their knowledge to him, if they wished to remain on civil
terms with him. By degrees, in course of years, facts became known; higher
scientific authorities on the continent declared themselves convinced, or in
favour of that genuine inquiry which has always ended in
con‐
page: 487 viction
conviction
; and the tone of London society began to change. The physician
referred to ceased to gibe and jeer, and sat silent and embarrassed while
the subject was discussed; and at length began to ask questions, and show a
desire to learn: “and now,” continued Mr. Hallam, “we can say that we are
acquainted with nobody who has attended to the subject with any earnestness
who does not consider certain facts of mesmerism to be as completely
established as any facts whatever in the whole range of science.” He added,
“this reception of a great truth is a great thing to have seen.”—In a note I
had from Mr. Hallam before I left Tynemouth, he declared his view to be
this. “I have no doubt that mesmerism, and some other things which are not
mesmerism properly so‐called, are fragmentary parts of some great law of the
human frame which we are on the verge of discovering.” It appears to be the
method of the London doctors now to admit the facts (being unable longer to
suppress them) and to account for them, each according to his own favourite
physiological view; and thus the truth is near its full admission. When the
facts are admitted in London, the medical men in the provinces will not long
continue to scoff and perpetrate slander: and when a score of commentators
on a single class of facts offer a score of explanations, the true solution
is so much needed that it must soon be obtained.

Amidst the happiness of my visit at my brother’s, I felt a really painful
longing to see verdure and foliage. On leaving Newcastle, I had been carried
swiftly past a railway embankment covered with broom; and the dark green of
that bank made my heart throb at the time, and bred in me a desperate
longing to see more. I did not think I could have wished so much for any
thing as I did to see foliage. I had not seen a tree for above five years,
except a scrubby little affair which stood above the haven at Tynemouth,
exposed to every wind that blew, and which looked nearly the same at
midsummer and Christmas. It was this kind of destitution which occasioned
some of the graceful acts of kindness which cheered my Tynemouth sojourn. An
old friend sent me charming coloured sketches of old trees in Sherwood
Forest: and an artist who was
page: 488 an entire
stranger to me, Mr. McIan, stayed away from a day’s excursion at a friend’s
house in the country, to paint me a breezy tree. For months the breezy tree
was pinned up on the wall before me, sending many a breeze through my mind.
But now I wanted to see a real tree in leaf; and I had to wait sadly long
for it. The spring of 1846 was the latest I remember, I think,—unless it be
the present one (1855). My impatience must have been very apparent, for my
sister‐in‐law “fooled” me, when I came down to breakfast on the 1st of
April, with lamentations about “the snow under the acacia.” There was no
snow there; but the hedges seemed dead for ever; and there was scarcely a
tinge of green on them when I left Edgbaston for Nottingham, on the second
of May.

There,—at Lenton, near Nottingham,—new pleasures awaited me. Spring is always
charming on the Trent meadows at Nottingham, where the clear shoaly river
runs between wide expanses of meadow, where crocuses almost hide the grass
for a few weeks of the year. It was an unspeakable pleasure to me to move
freely about blossoming gardens; but no one but a restored invalid can
conceive what it was to ramble for miles, to Clifton woods, or to Woollaton,
drinking in the sunshine in the fields, and the cool shade under the green
avenues. Now, at the end of ten years, I do not find my thirst for foliage
fully quenched, after the long absence at Tynemouth. There were excursions
from Nottingham to Newstead and elsewhere,—all delightful; but I don’t know
that I had not more pleasure from the common lawn, with the shadows of the
trees flickering upon it, than from any change of objects. The surprise to
my friends, and also to myself, was that I was so little nervous,—so capable
of doing like other people, as if I had not led a sick and hermit life for
so many years. This exemption from the penalties of long illness I believe I
owe to mesmerism being the means of cure. I had left off all drugs for ten
months, except the opiates, which had been speedily reduced from the outset
of the experiment, and now discontinued for half a year. I had not therefore
to recover from the induced illness and constitutional poisoning caused by
drugs; and my nerves had been well strung by the
page: 489 mesmerism which I had now discontinued. I
certainly felt at first, when at the Lakes and at Edgbaston, by no means
sure that I knew how to behave in society; but old associations soon
revived, and I fell into the old habit of social intercourse. It was not
very long indeed before we proposed,—my friends and I,—to ignore altogether
the five years at Tynemouth,—to call me 38 instead of 43, and proceed as if
that awful chasm had never opened in my path which now seemed closed up, or
invisible as it lay behind. There were things belonging to it, however,
which I should have been sorry to forget, or to lose the vivid sense of; and
chief among these was the kindness of a host of friends. I have observed,
however, at intervals since, that though the sense of that kindness is as
vivid as ever, the other incidents and interests of that term of purgatory
have so collapsed as to make the period which seemed in experience to be an
eternity, like a momentary blank,—a night of uneasy dreams, soon forgotten
between the genuine waking interests of two active days.

With this new day of activity arose a strong fresh interest. It was at
Lenton, near Nottingham, that I first saw Mr. Atkinson, whose friendship has
been the great privilege of the concluding period of my life. I have told
above that Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montagu mentioned him to me in the letter in
which they besought me to try mesmerism. I had never heard of him before, as
far as I know. I have often said, as I am ready to say again, that I owe my
recovery mainly to him,—that my ten last happy years have been his gift to
me: hut it is not true, as many people have supposed and led others to
believe, that I was mesmerised by him at Tynemouth. I am careful in
explaining this, because many persons who think it necessary to assign some
marvellous reason for my present philosophical views, and who are unwilling
to admit that I could have arrived at them by my own means and in my own
way, have asserted that Mr. Atkinson was my mesmeriser, and that he infused
into me his own views by the power he thus gained over my brain. I might
explain that I never was unconscious,—never in the mesmeric sleep,—during
the whole process of recovery; but the simplest and most
page: 490 incontestible reply is by dates. I was first
mesmerised on the 22nd of June, 1844; I was well in the following November:
I went forth on my travels in January, 1845, and first saw Mr. Atkinson on
the 24th of May of that year. The case was this. Mr. and Mrs. Montagu,
earnest that I should try mesmerism, brought about a meeting at their house,
in June, 1844, between Mr. Atkinson and an intimate friend of mine who had
visited me, and was about to go to me again. They discussed the case: and
from that time Mr. Atkinson’s instructions were our guidance. He, too,
obtained for me the generous services of the widow lady mentioned above,
when my maid’s operations were no longer sufficient; and we followed his
counsel till I was well. As for the share he had in the ultimate form
assumed by my speculations, on their becoming opinions,—he himself expressed
it in a saying so curiously resembling one uttered by a former guide and
instructor that it is worth quoting both. The more ancient guide said, when
I was expressing gratitude to him, “O! I only helped you to do in a
fortnight what you would have done for yourself in six weeks.” Mr. Atkinson
said “I found you out of the old ways, and I showed you the shortest way
round the corner—that’s all.” I certainly knew nothing of his philosophical
opinions when we met at Lenton; and it was not till the close of 1847, when,
on my setting about my book on Egypt, I wrote him an account of
my opinions, and how I came by them, and he replied by a
somewhat similar confidence, that I had any clear knowledge what his views
were. I shall probably have more to say about this hereafter. Meantime, this
is the place for explaining away a prevalent mistake as to my recovery
having been wrought by the mesmerising of a friend whom I had, in fact,
never seen.

I vividly remember the first sight of him, when one of my hostesses and I
having gone out to meet him, and show him the way, saw him turn the corner
into the lane, talking with the gardener who was conveying his carpet‐bag.
He also carried a bag over his shoulder. He looked older than I expected,
and than I knew he was. His perfect gentlemanliness is his most immediately
striking and uncontested attribute. We were struck with this;
page: 491 and also with a certain dryness in his mode of
conversation which showed us at once that he was no sentimentalist; a
conviction which was confirmed in proportion as we became acquainted with
his habit of thought. We could not exactly call him reserved; for he was
willing to converse, and ready to communicate his thoughts; yet we felt it
difficult to know him. It was years before I, in particular, learned to know
him, certainly and soundly, though we were in constant correspondence, and
frequently met: but I consider myself no rule for others in the matter. All
my faults, and all my peculiarities, were such as might and did conspire to
defer the time when I might understand my friend as he was perfectly willing
to be understood. One of the bad consequences of my deafness has been the
making me far too much of a talker: and, though friends whom I can trust
aver that I am also a good listener, I certainly have never allowed a fair
share of time and opportunity to slower and more modest and considerate
speakers. I believe that, amidst the stream of talk I poured out upon him,
it was impossible for him to suppose or believe how truly and earnestly I
really did desire to hear his views and opinions; and as, in spite of this,
he did tell me much which I thought over, and talked over when he was gone,
it is plain that he was not reserved with me. A yet greater impediment to
our mutual understanding was that I, hitherto alone in my pursuit of
philosophy, had no sufficient notion of other roads to it than that which I
had found open before me; and Mr. Atkinson’s method was so wholly different
that it took me, prepossessed as I was, a very long time to ascertain his
route and ultimate point of view. I had, for half my life, been astray among
the metaphysicians, whose schemes I had at my tongue’s end, and whose
methods I supposed to be the only philosophical ones. I at first took Mr.
Atkinson’s disregard of them and their methods for ignorance of what they
had done, as others who think themselves philosophers have done since. Let
it not be supposed that I set this down without due shame. I have much to
blush for in this matter, and in worse. I now and then proffered him in
those days information from my metaphysical authors, for which he politely
thanked me, leaving me to find
page: 492 out in time
how he knew through and through the very matters which the metaphysicians
had barely sketched the outside of. In truth, he at his Baconian point of
view, and I at my metaphysical, were in our attempts to understand each
other something like beings whose reliance is on a different sense,—those
who hear well and those who see well,—meeting to communicate. When the blind
with their quick ears, and the deaf and dumb with their alert eyes meet, the
consequences usually are desperate quarrels. In our case, I was sometimes
irritated; and when irritated, always conceited and wrong; but my friend had
patience with me, seeing what was the matter, and knowing that there were
grand points of agreement between us which would secure a thorough
understanding, sooner or later. If, amidst my metaphysical wanderings I had
reached those points of agreement, there was every reason to suppose that
when I had found the hopelessness of the metaphysical point of view, with
its uncertain method and infinite diversity of conclusions,—corresponding
with the variety of speculators,—I should find the true exterior point of
view, the positive method, and its uniform and reliable conclusions. In this
faith, and in wonderful patience, my friend bore with my waywardness and
occasional sauciness, till at length we arrived at a complete understanding.
When our book,—our “Letters on Man’s Nature and Development,”—came out, and
was abused in almost every periodical in the kingdom, it amused me to see
how very like my old self the metaphysical reviewers were;—how exclusively
they fastened on the collateral parts of the book, leaving its method, and
all its essential part, wholly untouched. It is a curious fact that, of all
the multitude of adverse reviewers of our book that we read, there was not
one that took the least notice of its essential part,—its philosophical
Method. Scarcely any part of it indeed was touched at all, except the
anti‐theological portion, which was merely collateral.

Such was my method of criticism of Mr. Atkinson, on the first occasion of our
meeting. As we walked up and down a green alley in the garden, he astonished
and somewhat confounded me by saying how great he thought the mistake of
page: 493 thinking so much and so artificially as
people are for ever striving to do about death and about living again. Not
having yet by any means got out of the atmosphere of selfishness which is
the very life of Christian doctrine, and of every theological scheme, I was
amazed at his question,—what it could signify whether we, with our
individual consciousness, lived again? I asked what could possibly signify
so much,—being in a fluctuating state then as to the natural grounds of
expectation of a future life, (I had long given up the scriptural) but being
still totally blind to the selfish instincts involved in such anxiety as I
felt about the matter. I was, however, in a certain degree struck by the
nobleness of his larger view, and by the good sense of the doctrine that our
present health of mind is all the personal concern that we have with our
state and destiny: that our duties lie before our eyes and close to our
hands; and that our business is with what we know, and have it in our charge
to do, and not at all with a future which is, of its own nature,
impenetrable. With grave interest and an uneasy concern, I talked this over
afterwards with my hostess. At first she would not credit my account of Mr.
Atkinson’s view; and then she was exceedingly shocked, and put away the
subject. I, for my part, soon became able to separate the uneasiness of
contravened associations from that of intellectual opposition. I soon
perceived that this outspoken doctrine was in full agreement with the action
of my mind for some years past, on the particular subject of a future life;
and that, when once Christianity ceases to be entertained as a scheme of
salvation, the question of a future life becomes indeed one of which every
large‐minded and unselfish person may and should say,—“What does it
signify?” Amidst many alternations of feeling, I soon began to enjoy
breathings of the blessed air of freedom from superstition,—which is the
same thing as freedom from personal anxiety and selfishness;—that freedom,
under a vivid sense of which my friend and I, contrasting our superstitious
youth with our emancipated maturity, agreed that not for the universe would
we again have the care of our souls upon our hands.

At length, the last day of May arrived, and my longings for
page: 494 my Lake lodgings were to be gratified. The mossy
walls with their fringes of ferns; the black pines reflected in the waters:
the amethyst mountains at sunset, and the groves and white beaches beside
the lake had haunted me almost painfully, all spring; and my hosts and
hostesses must have thought my inconcealable anticipations somewhat
unmannerly. They could make allowance for me, however: and they sent much
sympathy with me. It was truly a gay life that was before me now. My
intention was not to work at all; an intention which I have never been able
to fulfil when in health, and which soon gave way now, before a call of duty
which I very grudgingly obeyed. On the day of my arrival at Waterhead,
however, I had no idea of working; and the prospect before me was of basking
in the summer sunshine, and roving over hill and dale in fine weather, and
reading and working beside the window overlooking the lake (Windermere) in
rainy hours, when lakes have a beauty of their own. My lodging, taken for
six months, was the house which stands precisely at the head of the lake,
and whose grass‐plat is washed by its waters. The view from the windows of
my house was wonderfully beautiful,—one feature being a prominent rock,
crowned with firs, which so projected into the lake as to be precisely
reflected in the crimson, orange and purple waters when the pine‐crest rose
black into the crimson, orange and purple sky, at sunset. When the young
moon hung over those black pines, the beauty was so great that I could
hardly believe my eyes. On the day of my arrival, when I had met my new maid
from Dublin (my Tynemouth nurse being unable to leave her mother’s
neighbourhood,) and when I had been welcomed by a dear old friend or two, I
found an intoxicating promise of bliss whichever way I turned. I was
speedily instructed in the morality of lakers,—the first principle of which
is, (at least, so they told me) never to work except in bad weather. The
woods were still full of wild anemones and sorrel, and the blue bells were
just coming out. The meadows were emerald green, and the oaks were just
exchanging their May‐golden hue for light green, when the sycamores, so
characteristic of the region, were growing sombre in their massy
page: 495 foliage. The friends whom I had met during my
winter visit were kind in their welcome; and many relations and friends came
that summer, to enjoy excursions with me. It was all very gay and charming;
and if I found the bustle of society a little too much,—if I felt myself
somewhat disappointed in regard to the repose which I had reckoned on, that
blessing was, as I knew, only deferred.

As to this matter,—of society. There is a perpetual change going on in such
neighbourhoods in the Lake District as that of Ambleside. Retired merchants
and professional men fall in love with the region, buy or build a house, are
in a transport with what they have done, and, after a time, go away. In five
or six years, six houses of friends or acquaintance of mine became inhabited
by strangers. Sorry as I was, on each occasion, to lose good friends or
pleasant acquaintances, I did not call on their successors,—nor on any other
new‐comers: nor did I choose, from the beginning, to visit generally in
Ambleside. When I made up my mind to live there, I declined the dinner and
evening engagements offered to me, and visited at only three or four houses;
and very sparingly at those. It did not suit me to give parties, otherwise
than in the plainest and most familiar way; and I had some idea of the
mischiefs and dangers of such society as is found promiscuously cast into a
small neighbourhood like this. I had not time to waste in meeting the same
people,—not chosen as in London, but such as chanced to be thrown together
in a very small country town,—night after night: I was aware how nearly
impossible it is to keep out of the gossip and the quarrels which prevail in
such places; and there was no adequate reason for encountering them. I
foresaw that among a High‐church squirearchy, and Low‐church evangelicals,
and the moderate‐church few, who were timid in proportion to their small
numbers, I might be tolerated; and even courted at first, on account of my
reputation, but must sooner or later give deadly offence by some outbreak of
heresy or reforming tendency, stronger than they could bear. I therefore
confined my visiting to three or four houses, merely exchanging calls with
others: and it is well I did. Of those three or four,
page: 496 scarcely one could endure my avowal of my
opinions in 1851. Even with them, I had before ceased, or did then cease, to
exchange hospitalities. As they had sought me, and even urgently pressed
themselves upon me, (one family in particular, whose mere name I had never
heard when I arrived) they were especially in need of my compassion at the
plight they found themselves in,—with goodness of heart enough to remember
that our acquaintance was all of their seeking, but with too much narrowness
and timidity to keep up intercourse through such opprobrium as my opinions
brought on me among their High‐church neighhours. They had the shame (which
I believe them to be capable of feeling) of being aware, and knowing that
I was aware, that they sought me, as they are wont to seek
and flatter all celebrities, for my fame, and to gratify their own love of
excitement; and that their weakness stood confessed before the trial of my
plain avowal of honest opinions. It made no difference that, after a time,
when the gossip had blown over, and my neighbours saw that I did not want
them, and did not depend on their opinions in any way, they came round, and
began to be attentive and kind:—their conduct at a moment of crisis proved
to me that I had judged rightly in declining Ambleside visiting from the
beginning; and their mutual quarrelling, fierce and wide and deep, certainly
confirmed my satisfaction with my independent plan of life. My interests lay
among old friends at a distance; and I had as much social intercourse as I
at all desired when they came into the district. I was amused and instructed
by the words of an ingenuous young friend, who, taking leave of me one
winter afternoon at her own gate, said: “Ah! now,—you are going home to a
comfortable quiet evening by your own fire! Really, I think it is quite
hypocritical in us!—We dross and go out, and seem to be so pleased, when we
are longing all the time to be at home! We meet the same people, who have
only the same talk; and we get so tired!” It was not long
before that family withdrew from the Ambleside visiting which I had always
declined. A very few faithful friends, whose regard did not depend on the
popular nature of my opinions, remained true
page: 497 and dear to me; and thus I found that book,—the “Atkinson Letters,”—do me
the same good and welcome service in my own valley that it did in the wide
world;—it dissolved all false relations, and confirmed all true ones.
Finally, now that that business has long been settled, and that all my other
affairs are drawing near their close, I may make my declaration that I have
always had as much society as I wished for, and sometimes a great deal more.
And this leads me to explain why I came to live where I am;—a prodigious
puzzle, I am told, to the great majority of my London acquaintance.

When I had been thoroughly and avowedly well for half a year, I found my
family had made up their minds, as I had scarcely a doubt that they would,
that my mother’s settlement at Liverpool had better not be disturbed. She
was among three of her children settled there, and she was suited with a
companion better adapted to aid her in her nearly blind condition than any
deaf person could be. It would have been a most serious and injurious
sacrifice to me to live in a provincial town. The choice for me, in regard
to my vocation, was between London and a purely country residence. I was
partly amused and partly shocked at the amazement of some of my really
intimate friends, to whom I supposed my character fully known, at my
choosing the latter. One of these friends wrote to me that she could not at
all fancy me “a real country lady;” and another told Mr. Atkinson that she
did not believe I had any genuine love of natural scenery. Mr. Hallam told
me, some years afterwards, that he and others of my friends had considered
my retreat from London, after having known the delights of its society, “a
most doubtful and serious experiment,—a most doubtful
experiment;” but that they found, by the testimony of mutual friends who had
visited me, that it had “answered completely.”—My reasons are easily told. I
was now, when at liberty to form my own plan of life, past the middle of its
course. I had seen the dangers and moral penalties of literary life in
London for women who had become accustomed to its excitements; and I knew
that I could not be happy if I degenerated into “a hackney‐coach and company
life.” No true woman, married or single, can be happy
page: 498 without some sort of domestic
life;—without having somebody’s happiness dependent on her; and my own ideal
of an innocent and happy life was a house of my own among poor improvable
neighbours, with young servants whom I might train and attach to myself;
with pure air, a garden, leisure, solitude at command, and freedom to work
in peace and quietness. When to all this could be added fine natural
scenery, the temptations were such as London could not rival. If I had
country, I would have the best; and my mind was made up at once,—to live at
the Lakes,—as soon as I was sure of my liberty to choose. I began to look
about in the neighbourhood at cottages to let or on sale. The most promising
was one at Clappersgate, at the head of Wintermere, which was offered me for
£20 a year. It had more rooms than I wanted, and an exceedingly pretty
porch; and a little garden, in which was a tempting copper‐beech. But the
ceilings were too low for my bookcases, and the house was old; and it
commanded no great beauty, except from the attic windows. A friend who went
with me to view it said that £20 was the interest of £500; and that for £500
I could build myself a cottage after my own heart. This was strikingly true:
and thus the idea of having at once a house of my own was suggested. By the
necessity of the case, the matter was soon settled. A dissenting minister,
an opulent man who had built a chapel and school, and bought a field for
cottage‐building, found life too hard for a dissenter among the orthodox at
Ambleside, and especially after he had proposed to supply the want of
cottages which is there the screw which the rich put upon the labouring
classes; and, after his health had sunk under the treatment he encountered,
he was obliged to leave the place to save his life. My house‐viewing friend
brought me, on the 27th of June, the plan of this minister’s field, which
was to be sold in lots the next day but one. The time was short; but land
was becoming rare in the neighbourhood; and I went to see the field. One of
the lots was a rocky knoll, commanding a charming view. I knew no one whom I
could ask to go and bid; and I could not feel sure of a due supply of water;
not knowing then that wherever there is rock, there is a tolerable certainty
of water. The other lots
page: 499 appeared to me to
lie too low for building; and I, in my simplicity, concluded that the pretty
knoll would be the first and surest to sell. Next day, I found that that
lot, and the one at the foot of the rise remained unsold. I went to the
minister for a consultation. His wife satisfied me about the water‐supply;
and she moreover said that as the other unsold slip, valued at £70, would
not sell by itself, if I would buy the Knoll, I should have the other for
£20. I agreed on the spot. There was one other three‐cornered piece, lying
between these and the meadows which were entailed land, certain never to be
built on: and this bit had been bought at the sale by an exciseman, to graze
his pony when he came his rounds. My friends all agreed in lamenting over
that sale, and said the exciseman would soon be running up some hideous
structure, to make me pay “through the nose” for his nook. I replied that I
must stop somewhere; and that the matter seemed settled by the land having
been sold. It makes me grateful now to think what pains my friends took on
my behalf. Mrs. Arnold consulted the Wordsworths; and they all came to
exhort me to try to get the nook, for the sake of myself and my heirs; and
my original adviser found up the exciseman, and came back with the news that
no conveyance had yet been made out, and that the man would let me have the
land for a bonus of £5. I whipped out my five sovereigns; and the whole was
mine. It may seem that I have gone into much detail about a trifle: but I am
giving an account of myself; and there have been few things in my life which
have had a more genial effect on my mind than the possession of a piece of
land. Those who consider what some scenes of my life had been,—my being left
with a single shilling at the time of our losses, my plodding through London
mud when I could not get my series published, and my five years’ confinement
at Tynemouth, may conceive what it was to me to go, in the lustrous days of
that summer, to meliorate in my field at eventide, and anticipate the
heathful and genial life before me. The kind cousin whom I have mentioned as
always at my elbow in all time of need, or when a graceful service could be
rendered, came with his family to the Lakes at that precise time. Knowing my
affairs,—of
page: 500 which he generously took
the management,—he approved my scheme; and he did more. I asked him plainly
whether he thought me justified in building a house of the kind I explained,
and of which I showed him the builder’s estimate. He called on me alone one
morning,—on business, as he said; and his “business” was this. He told me
that he considered me abundantly justified: he added that there could be no
difficulty in obtaining, on such securities as I could offer, whatever
additional money would be requisite for finishing the house (the land was
already paid for,) but that, to save trouble and speculation, I had better
send in the bills to him; and he would, to save me from all sense of
obligation, charge me with interest till I had paid off the whole. The
transaction, of which this was the graceful beginning, was no less
gracefully carried on and ended. The amount was (as always happens in such
cases) more than we expected; and I was longer, owing to the failure of one
of my plans, in repaying the loan; but my cousin cheered me by his
approbation and sympathy; and at last presented me with the final batch of
interest, to purchase something for the house to remember him by.

Then came the amusement of planning my house, which I did all myself. It was
the newest of enterprises to me; and seriously did I ponder all the
requisites;—how to plan the bedrooms, so that the beds should not be in a
draught, nor face the window nor the fireplace, &c. I did not then
know the importance of placing beds north and south, in case of illness,
when that position may be of the last consequence to the patient; but it so
happens that all my beds stand, or may stand so. The whole scheme was
fortunate and charming. There is not a single blunder or nuisance in my
pretty house; and now that it is nearly covered with ivy, roses,
passion‐flowers, and other climbers, and the porch a bower of honeysuckles,
I find that several of my neighbours, and not a few strangers, consider my
Knoll,—position and house together,—the prettiest dwelling in the
valley;—airy, gay, and “sunny within and without,” as one family are pleased
to say. “It is,” said Wordsworth, “the wisest step in her life; for” ... ...
... and we supposed he was
page: 501 going on to
speak of the respectability, comfort and charm of such a retreat for an
elderly woman; but not so. “It is the wisest step in her life; for the value
of the property will be doubled in ten years.”

One of those London friends whom I have mentioned as doubting my discretion
in settling here, was paying me a morning visit at my lodgings when I was
planning my house; and while taking a kind interest in looking over the plan
and elevation, she thought it right to make a remonstrance which she has
since recalled with a generous amusement. “Now, my dear friend,” said she,
“I take a real interest in all this:but,—do be persuaded,—sell your field,
and stay where you are, in this nice lodging. Do, now! Why should you not
stay here?”

“First,” said I, “because it costs me more to live here in three rooms than
it would in a whole house of my own.

“Second: there is no room here for my book‐cases; and I want my library.

“Third: I am paying for house‐room for my furniture at Tynemouth.

“Fourth: this house stands low, and is apt to be flooded and damp in
winter.

“Fifth: this house was a barn; and the dust lies a quarter of an inch thick,
in some weathers, on every thing in the sitting‐room.

“Sixth: the chimney smokes so that I could not have a fire without keeping a
window open.

“Seventh: Being close on the margin of the lake, the house is swarming with
rats.

“Eighth: ... ... ... .”

“O! stop—stop!” cried my friend, now quite ready to leave my own affairs in
my own hands. She long after spent some days with me at the Knoll, and
pronounced my house and my scheme of life perfect for me.